E71x To Hit AT&T In May

There were a grand total of two Nseries/Eseries phones ever subsized by AT&T. About zero of them were actually successful. They were the N75 and E62, and both suffered from some major issues: the former had some lousy battery life and heat problems, while the latter looked like a bland, oversized calculator.

But now Nokia’s giving it another shot, or possibly forced to give it another shot thanks to weak demand in the Americas, most notably the USA. That’s no accident – Nokia doesn’t sell many high-end phones through the carriers here, preferring to sell its most featured smartphones online and at its two stores in the entire country (New York and Chicago).

So what am I getting at? Basically, there’s an AT&T-exclusive clone coming to the USA, and it’s the E71x. Based on the E71, which has been officially available since July, the budget-friendly E71x will cost only $100 (update: $149.99 + $50 AT&T Promotion card, which can be used to pay your wireless bill) with a two-year contract, making it the cheapest Blackberry-ish phone around (at least on AT&T, anyway). That’s awesome. But there’s just one catch:

Nokia, which is trying to claw back US market share by working more closely with carriers, customized the e71x to AT&T’s specifications, including working on the user interface, and linking up to the carrier’s services, including its music store and directory services.

Still, I see the E71x doing pretty well in this market, simply because it has a leg up against the competition in terms of features, and it’s cheap. Really cheap.